When you are parallel charging there is much the charger is blind to. I used to be more hands off when charging. But after seeing a cell at 4.24v and rising with no outright indication of trouble on the PL8, I tend to believe we need to be much more proactive when parallel charging. Sorry to say, parallel charging is simply not the miracle drug many believe it to be.

.
Not a miracle drug, but it sure is a productivity booster. I just ordered four more Safe Parallel adapters and will be rigging my 2 PL8's for 4P charging.
.
My charge box is going to look like a sow with eight little piggies . . . .
.

So are you saying that we've reached a limit here? Only 11 screens can be stored? If so there are at least two other which I find far less useful, especially now that we have the "summary screen". My hit list would look like this.

FWIW The missing Bypass % screen was the first thing I noticed about 3.26 and 3.27 and my first comment was , "Well I have already found something I do not like."

I guess it falls under the title of

When the needs of the many out weight the needs of the few.

The only saving grace is that the Balance Bypass is still in the CCS so atleast at home we who care about such can still see what is going on. If Laptops keep coming down in price perhaps one day I will start taking an El cheapo one to the field.

Charles

Needs of many?

Last I recall only one person requested balanced storage discharge and that was implemented fairly quickly.

I didn't think so when I charged 6 packs a little while back only to find all the packs were wildly out of balance. I ended up finishing each pack individually. Even though they were almost fully charged, it took each pack 10 to 15 minutes each. Multiply that times 6 plus the time for the original parallel charge. No so much of a productivity booster.

I've noticed that if I'm cycling packs that have recently used or balanced, its far less of an issue. But if the packs have been sitting for a couple weeks, it seems safer and faster affair to charge them individually. Here is an example from today. These packs were cycled last Saturday, so this is not as bad as it can get. After parallel charging 2x 6s 3300 at 3c each, cell #1 was 4.195 on pack1 and 4.167 on pack 2. A difference of 0.028v. Not horrible, but far from perfect.

Considering these cells were connected directly together during the entire charge it makes you wonder how this can even happen. To answer that question, I thought it would be interesing to see how long it would take for the cells to equalize if I left them connected to the parallel harness (not being charged). After 5 minutes the delta had only dropped to 0.023v. After 10 minutes the gap was down to 0.015v After 25 minutes it was down to 0.005v.

Considering that at 3c the charge time only lasts about 15 minutes, this may not be enough time for parallel cells to equalize. It seems that if you are going to parallel charge, lowering the charge rate to 1c would help alot, giving the cells more time to equalize. But at that reduced rate, the charge time would be considerably longer and it may not be any faster than charging the packs individually. I'm also considering charging to 4.15v. Then allow the parallel packs to set for 15-20 minutes, alowing the cells to equalize. Then restart the charge and let the PL8 rebalance the cells. Or perhaps I just need to buy 3 more Powerlab8s

Last I recall only one person requested balanced storage discharge and that was implemented fairly quickly.

Pete if Tim could be swayed that heavily by one person then PL8 would be a lot closer to my dream charger / battery workstation / management system I would think.

Snip from a recent post

Quote:

We did this because we get inundated with customers who do not understand this screen, and we feel like the new summary screen which replaces it is more useful. We kept it in the CCS.

IMO if each feacture which was not understood by many was simplie elimimated the PL8 would become a lot like a CP10XP very quickly. Fact is I have used PowerLab 8 s rather extensively for a fairly long period in time and no fooling thousands of charges and I do not claim to understand all of its' capabilities.

Quote:
Originally Posted by everydayflyer
I guess it falls under the title of

When the needs of the many out weight the needs of the few.

Quote:

So are you saying that we've reached a limit here? Only 11 screens can be stored? If so there are at least two other which I find far less useful, especially now that we have the "summary screen". My hit list would look like this.

No I am saying that the many could not understand something that is fairly simple IMO and that other / or same manys wanted a consolidated screen and they got what they wanted and that the few of us who could understood the Blance % screen and used it and found it extremely useful were out voted.

For those who may be unaware the Balance Power % of bypass was first introduced in the CellPro 10 years ago.

One solution is not not upgrade past V 3.25 unless you really want the consolidated screen and the Parallel Yes to multiply the set charge rate intead of dividing it.

What I was asking is: "Is there a limit within the charger with regards to the storage different screens?" If not, why not just make the balance percentage screen hidden to address the customer confusion issues?

I've been waiting for the parallel charge logic change for some time, so I'm reluctant to give that up.

Balance % Screen Update

Hi:

O.K. Wow! We never dreamed removing the BAL % screen would result in such an outcry from users! Sorry for that. But clearly we need to reconsider this decision based on your collective feedback. Since it seems that some customers truly value this screen, and those who do are likely well equipped to manage screens using the CCS, here's what we'll do:

1) There are currently 13 data screens available in the PL8, not 11, as Gregor99 indicated. If you use the pull-down on the screens tab to choose the screens to assign to a preset, you can count the total there. Not every screen applies to every chemistry. The Greeting screen is mandatory, but it still needs to be counted.

2) We think it would be a mistake to sacrifice any of the other data screens to put the BAL % screen back in, nor is it necessary. This solution would likely just result in the same outcome: somebody else will miss whatever screen we chose to remove entirely, and there really is no support issue with the other screens used on the PL8.

3) What we plan to do is add back the BAL % screen as the 14th screen. We won't add it back to the presets by default and hide it as has been suggested, because then a Factory Default would be required with the next firmware revision.

4) Any customer who truly values the BAL % screen will be able to add it to one of the EMPTY screens of any Li preset using the CCS. Currently there are 12 screens provisioned for each Li preset, but only 11 are utilized by default. So a customer can add the BAL % screen back as the 12th EMPTY slot and still have this old screen as well as all the other screens if he so chooses. Optionally, he can replace any screen with the BAL % screen.

5) We will have to release changes to beta testers again. I can not put a precise time-frame on it at this time, nor can I say in what revision it will appear; but it will likely occur in v3.28. As usual, once beta testers give us the green light, we'll release it to the public.

I would estimate this to require about 2-4 weeks to accomplish. In the mean time, we recommend that customers weigh the value of new features in the v3.27 release, and make a decision for themselves whether to keep it or revert to v3.25 to get the BAL % screen back.

It is important to note that this plan should meet the criteria we established to remove a "support headache" while at the same time providing customers with a product that does not sacrifice functionality.